e moral agency of created intelligent beings.
God's actions, and particularly those which are to be attributed to
Him as moral governor, are morally good in the highest degree. They
are most perfectly holy and righteous; and we must conceive of Him as
influenced in the highest degree by that which, above all others, is
properly a moral inducement, viz., the moral good which He sees in
such and such things: and therefore He is, in the most proper sense, a
moral agent, the source of all moral ability and agency, the fountain
and rule of all virtue and moral good; tho by reason of His being
supreme over all, it is not possible He should be under the influence
of law or command, promises or threatenings, rewards or punishments,
counsels or warnings. The essential qualities of a moral agent are in
God, in the greatest possible perfection; such as understanding, to
perceive the difference between moral good and evil; a capacity of
discerning that moral worthiness and demerit, by which some things are
praiseworthy, others deserving of blame and punishment; and also a
capacity of choice, and choice guided by understanding, and a power of
acting according to his choice or pleasure, and being capable of doing
those things which are in the highest sense praiseworthy. And herein
does very much consist that image of God wherein He made man (which we
read of Gen. i. 26, 27, and chapter ix. 6), by which God distinguishes
man from the beasts, viz., in those faculties and principles of
nature, whereby he is capable of moral agency. Herein very much
consists the natural image of God; as His spiritual and moral image,
wherein man was made at first, consisted in that moral excellency,
that he was endowed with.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

Born in Boston in 1706, died in 1790; settled in
Philadelphia in 1729; Postmaster of Philadelphia in 1737;
discovered the identity of lightning with electricity in
1753; proposed a "Plan of Union" at Albany in 1754; Colonial
Agent for Pennsylvania in England in 1757-62 and 1764-75;
Member of the Second Continental Congress in 1775; Member of
the Committee which drew up the Declaration of Independence
in 1776; Ambassador to France in 1776; helped to negotiate
the treaty of peace with England in 1783; President of
Pennsylvania in 1785-88; Member of the Constitutional
Convention in 1787.

I

HIS FIRST ENTRY INTO PHILADELPHIA[16]

(1729)

I